


After The Fall (Version One)

by strixus



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-31
Updated: 2009-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-05 12:58:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strixus/pseuds/strixus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU after the first war where things have gone badly for the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Memories and Losses

**Author's Note:**

> After the Fall  
> Here we may reign secure; and in my choice  
> To reign is worth ambition, though in hell:  
> Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.  
> \- John Milton, Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 261

Somewhere in the mountain wilderness of China, a man stands looking at a wall screen, absorbed in the images it is displaying. He does not look down, seemingly not noticing the small boy, probably no older than seven, who is tugging at his pants leg, looking up at the images the man is watching with uncomprehending wonder.   
"Grandfather," the boy calls the man, a non sequiter for two reasons: for one the man is obviously no relation to the small boy, and two, the man is in his late thirties, though his hair has gone salt and pepper gray in the last twenty years. "Grandfather," the boy's voice is more pleading, almost a whine for attention, "What are you watching? What are all those things?"  
The man does not look down at the boy, but instead, closes his eyes and bows his head. The boy has seen these images before, many many times before, but they have never been explained to him, nor to any of the other few children in the village born in the last twenty years. Their parents remember these images when they were new, and many are hesitant to expose their children to the crimes of the past. This boy, however, is his apprentice, who will one day guard these records as he does now. The man rests his hand on the pommel of the hilt of the archaic curved sword that hangs from his hip, knuckles white with the tightness of his grip.   
"These are images from before the Fall." The man says without opening his eyes.  
"But I thought…" The boy started.  
"You thought it had always been this way? That the sky was always led gray, the lightening always blue and red, humanity always confined to earth like flees on a dog's back?" There was a ripple of distant anger in the man's voice that the boy could not understand. "No, things were not always this way. Man is being punished for his arrogance, and we were deliverers of our own punishment." The man opens his eyes, and they focus on an image of the Great African Crater, one of the last images that had made it through the clouds of dust and soot which had swallowed most of the globe twenty years ago.   
"As guardian, you will have to understand these images to preserve them for the future. When the madness the world has come to ends, we must not make the same mistakes as were made in the past." The boy nods, though he does not understand. "The wars, the pain, the suffering – these are what we are being punished for. Our avarice, our greed, our envy – we suffer greatly now for our sins of the past."  
"Grandfather Chang…" The boy tries again.  
Chang Wufei looks down at the small boy, and sighs. "Perhaps today is the day for you to meet Nataku." The boy's eyes light up with excitement. "Come, you will need to know her to understand these things."   
Wufei pauses for another moment before moving away from the screens that display continually the images from the wars that lead up to the end modern civilization, throwing man back into a dark age more profound than the one after the fall of Rome, leaving scattered remains of technology and civilization around the globe. On the screen were images of the Gundams, in particular a dark, demonic looking mobile suit with wicked green eyes and energy blade. Wufei shuddered.   
"Yes, you will need to know Nataku very well to become the true Guardian."

* * *

The morning dispatches littered the surface of the antique oak desk, a snowfall of paper and folders that nearly hid the deeply polished wood surface, pitted and scarred with years of use and abuse. A small handful were carefully stacked on the corner, the rest lay forgotten after having been sorted through to find the few that were really of any import to their reader, some even crumpled and twisted under the heals of the heavy boots which propped themselves absently on the opposite corner of the desk from the stack of dispatches waiting to be read.   
Duo Maxwell leaned back in the high backed leather chair, letting his boot heal crunch a few more of the many messages that would have wasted his time to read, his mind primarily focused on the single page report he gripped white knuckle with both hands. Another squadron lost on the eastern border patrol, gone with nothing more than the silencing of their GPS transmitters, and no wreckage to be salvaged, let alone even found. Four more Leo suits lost out of his preciously slim arsenal of mobile suits, added to the four lost last month in the same area, and the month before. He could ill afford such losses continually along that border, if at all.   
Damn Wufei and his colony of survivors hold up in the wilderness beyond those mountains, Duo thought to himself, nothing he has is worth loosing four Leos a month to that wretchedly patched together Altron of his, even if he does have a near complete record of the war and the Earth before the Fall. And, while I would love to get my hands on that, Duo mused, it simply isn't worth the manpower for now. Especially with that, he glanced down at the next dispatch on the stack, bad news waiting for me to open it.  
Almost absently, Duo scratched off the remand order for the eastern border patrols, pulling them back several hundred kilometers, hopefully out of the Altron's range. He placed the orders in the stack with two other orders headed to other parts of his controlled territory, mainly the border regions, waiting for his seal and preparation for delivering. The borders always had troubles though, whether he was advancing the borders of the controlled territory, or simply fighting to keep them where they were, and his couriers had gotten used to the dispatch runs there. But these were only distractions to where his attention really lay in the world.  
Duo picked up the manila folder that was next on the stack, the black and red kanji on its cover the code numbers of one of his best under cover operatives. This particular one had infiltrated the organization that was, at least in terms of fighting man power, the only real threat left to his domination of what was left of mankind. They thought themselves well hidden from his watchful eye, deep in the jungles of the Amazon basin, but Duo had sent his operatives in early, disgusted both as defectors from the ranks of his troops, and other, far less conspicuous individuals, and infiltrated their ranks long ago. Trowa Barton, once pilot of the Heavyarms, now leader of this band of rebels who sought to topple his control of Europe and Eastern Europe, and the borderlands of what had once been the wilds of Russia and the wastelands of North Africa, had no idea of the presence of his spies in the upper echelon of his most trusted advisors, nor did he suspect that they fed him a continual stream of intelligence about their troop movements, plans, and goals.   
Duo scanned the report with a frown of deep displeasure. It contained nearly the identical information that his own intelligence reports had included, information Duo suspected to be nothing more than hearsay, concerning the whereabouts of the one thing Duo wanted more than world control: the Wing Zero. And while it was nice to see that Trowa was as in the dark on the subject as he was, but regardless, the information was useless to him. He quickly wrote the reply to the report, an angry beratement to the informant for sending him hearsay information, and added it to the stack.   
No, Duo thought to himself, we will not find the Wing Zero so easily as that. Heero is too intelligent to let it be seen in broad daylight, let alone by a large number of people like that. Duo crumpled the report and tossed it aside. No, even if Heero were suddenly to come out of hiding and make a move against him, he would not suddenly appear over a population center of any type, even an isolated refugee camp in North America, and then disappear just as suddenly. Duo more suspected it was simply a hopeful story, a rumor, with no truth to it what so ever. This suspicion was backed up by other agents who were tracking down Heero, following the trails and traces that any human left in the world, trying to locate him. Those leads were getting closer to producing fruits, but until then, Duo had other matters to deal with.  
The last full moon of the year was approaching, and this year, it would be marked by a very auspicious event, a full lunar eclipse. The last full moon of the year was the day of tribute in his empire, a day when the people who had flocked to him for protection after the Fall celebrated their protector and living god. Arrangements were being made to make this year's celebrations the most elaborate ever, with a number of sacrifices that would out do the last two years combined. At least, Duo thought to himself, something is going right for a change.


	2. Circles and Echoes

The field command tent sagged under the weight of the rain it had been subjected to for the last four weeks, its water proof roof and sides vibrating with the constant strike of fat rain drops. If you didn't learn to tune it out, the sound would penetrate your every waking thought, and even your dreams, till it felt like the rain its self was out to drive you mad. After fourteen winters in this same camp, one of the few places in the continent that remained both hidden and habitable during the winter storms, Trowa Barton had learned quite effectively to tune out the rain. What he had not learned to tune out, and never thought he would, however, were the constant mud, cold, hunger, and wind which filled his waking and sleeping hours equally.  
Winter camp was a lean, Spartan camp, made so out of the impossibility of maintaining the same level of supplies and hidden camp size that was possible during the sweltering, green summers of South America. The dense jungles were one of the few places left on earth that found the same level of green they had before the Fall, and had even seemed to become more green now that the weather patterns had stabilized in the last eighteen or so years. But in winter, they became bare, empty, rain soaked skeletal forests, with food as hard to come by as dry bedding. Thus, the camp of several hundred troops that gathered near one of the many river intersections in the Amazon basin broke up and scattered in a myriad of directions before the winter storms came. Trowa took with him only twenty of his closest advisors, best body guards, and the camp cooks, and vanished into the southern end of the jungles into the foothills of the Andes. And there they would stay, as they had every winter, waiting for the end of the winter rains and the return of the summer green.  
Winter was the most frustrating time of each year for Trowa, not for the rain, not for the isolation, nor even the hardships of the winter camp: winter meant one thing, the renewal of his enemy's power, and yet another mass murder of innocents at the hands of the man who had once been Trowa's comrade in arms, who now styled himself the High Lord of a dark empire which had claimed the whole of Europe and Russia. Another month and the strange powers that brought sun and green to the blasted lands of Europe, and blocked the attacks of Trowa's men from the heart of the Empire would be renewed in an orgy of blood sacrifice. He had seen it once, the first year it had been done, when he had been still been an ally of Duo's and not his enemy. The results had been miraculous, the clouds which blocked the life giving sun had parted, and the rain had fallen clean and clear, not black, but Trowa could not forget the broken, blood drained bodies which had lain scattered at the feet of the Deathscythe, children born somehow imperfect, deformed, as they so often were now.   
Trowa clenched his fist, remembering what Duo had said to him afterwards, his face and hands still covered in too bright red blood. "Here we may reign secure; and in my choice to reign is worth ambition." And in Trowa's mind, he had completed the line, "though in hell: better to reign in hell than serve in heaven."

* * *

In the heart of the Antarctic continent there is a range of mountains unmarked on any human map except a handful in the moldering, forest reclaimed libraries of a New England university. On those maps, they are marked in a spidery, shaky hand with a simple, yet precise name: the Mountains of Madness. Secret things, long beyond death, lay sleeping beneath those mountains, undisturbed for millions of years. But those things beneath the mountains are not what concerns us, for there is something else here as well.   
High on one of those mountains there is a Grecian style temple, its domed marble roof supported by twenty one pillars of black, white, and gray marble. Light shines out from between those pillars, piercing the blackness of the unearthly Antarctic night, warm and inviting. Within the circle of these pillars there is a stone floor with seven black circles laid out at the points of a seven pointed star. Two of these circles stand empty, each for a different reason; the other five occupied by hooded figures of various sizes and proportions, each dressed in a different color robe: red, blue, brown, silver, and gray.   
"We, the Seven, come to stand as we always have." The figure in blue intones, tapping the butt of the staff it holds against the stone floor, the metal rings jangling slightly off key, its slightly feminine voice echoing off the walls hollowly in a reminder of the two absences. "Brothers, Sisters, welcome home." The blue robed figure bows beneath its hood to the others around the circle, particularly to the figures in red and brown.  
"Thank you, Sister." The figure in red speaks next, its eyes traveling around the circle, looking at each pointedly. "The last moon of the year approaches yet again, and still we have not come to a resolution. Shiraha and his master are still unfound, and we are no closer to finding our lost brother than we were last Blood Moon or the one five before this!"  
"What do you propose we do, Shakaku?" The figure in silver growls angrily across the circle at the red figure named Shakaku. "We found that wretch-" the silver robed figure points a bony, transparent finger at the shivering, moaning figure in the brown robes in the circle next to Shakaku "- and what good did it do us? So we learned its master has gone beyond its reach, and is lost to us. Will we find the same when we find Shiraha? I would imagine so, as closely bonded as that soul was to us."  
"Yokaze, why do you do this every time?" Shakaku sighs. "Are you too about to abandon us, and become as Shinigami? You lost your master, just as Sagan, you know the pain that has driven him insane. You, however, did not languish, alone and lost, as he did, his body exposed to the snows and wind for how many years? How can we leave another of our Brothers to this as we did Sagan?"  
Suddenly, the brown robed figure throws back its hood, revealing a face that is nothing more than a ruin, one eye glaring blue, the other an empty, rust colored socket, the flesh hanging in tatters and rags. "GONE!" Sagan screams, its voice a rising wale that rivals the winds beyond the protection of the sacred place. "Gone… gone but not dead, dead but not dead….ooooh, no more of this… no more… let me go back to the sleep of peace…sleep without dreams… death…" Sagan trails off, the ruin of a mouth hanging half open, showing broken fangs that once could bite through solid stone. The blue eye stares from under a hanging flap of an eyelid accusingly at Yokaze, and then at the silent, unmoving figure in gray beside him.  
"Shiraha was the only one of us who could defeat Shinigami – the rest of us are powerless to him, especially now." Shakaku says, his voice a whisper. "We have to find Shiraha, be he alive, or passed beyond, or even like Sagan. If he lives at all, there is hope that Shinigami and his master can be stopped, and this world set right again from our failure."  
"And if he does not, Shakaku?" The figure in blue says softly.  
"If he is gone beyond, Ichibousenri, then the Nameless Creator save us, for our sins are the Fall of Man once again."  
The figure in gray suddenly seems to animate, and looks dead on at Shakaku. "We were not the ones that failed, Shakaku, do not forget that. It was Shiraha, and Yokaze too do not forget, who could not stop the chunk of Libra from falling to earth."  
"We failed, Kousotsu," Shakaku says bitterly, "by letting it come to such a do or die moment."   
"Gone…. Gone…gone but not dead…dead but not dead…" Sagan moans softly, but none of the others speak.


	3. Revelations and Locations

The High Lord sat alone in his private library, head bowed over a thick, leather bound volume, one of the many he had saved from mildew and rot in the abandoned great libraries of Europe. This particular text was yet another book of the occult salvaged from the libraries of the Vatican, which had, thus far, proved to be his best hunting ground for authentic texts on the subject. Nearly fifteen years of continual study on the subject had gained him a large working Latin vocabulary, a handful of useful additions to his understanding of the theories behind the powers he had all but accidentally learned to tap into all those years ago, and a small collection of useful spells, wards, and tricks that made daily life easier. Among those were the spells he had used to keep the candles which lit his reading desk from dripping wax, and the alert ward on the outer door to his chambers that prevented him from being surprised by any visitors.  
Duo looked up from the text, aware that those wards on the outer doors were no longer in place, broken by someone stepping through them. He swore to himself, upset at being disturbed at so late an hour, despite not truly needing sleep, and composed himself at his desk to look suitably displeased at whoever had dared to disturb him.  
He was even more upset to see, as the doors swung open, that the person who had disturbed him was his personal assistant, Joseph, the one person on earth who should know better than to disturb his reading. Joseph was a bright boy, having lasted seriously longer than his previous personal assistants, and, Duo thought to himself glumly, it would be a shame to kill the young man over something minor like this. But he needs to learn such things are unacceptable, Duo growled to himself, so a little scare shouldn't hurt him. Joseph stopped a yard away from the High Lord's reading desk and knelt, head bowed, right fist over his heart, waiting for the acknowledgement of the High Lord.  
"Joseph," Duo stood, stepping over to the young man, glaring down at him, "What is it I tell you every evening before I come in here to read?"  
"N-n-not to disturb you, or let anyone else disturb you, High Lord." Joseph stammered, not daring to rise from the kneel.   
"Joseph, do you remember what happened to my previous personal assistant?" Duo smiled darkly, seeing the boy nod his head slowly. Duo knew it was hard to forget the sight of seeing someone's soul being sucked from their body, it had taken him a few times doing it to get past the horrible sight himself. "I thought as much. Now, do you remember why he was punished like that?"  
"Because… Because he interrupted you, High Lord." Joseph gulped. Duo grinned, noticing the tremor that had crept down the young man's back.   
"Now, what is it that you felt was so important that I had to be interrupted –" Duo stressed the word with a hard glower. "And unless you are suddenly going to hand me the location of Heero Yui, I would start trying to settle yourself with your creator, because you are going to be seeing him very shortly."  
"But, High Lord…" Joseph held up a manila folder in a shaking, upturned hand, marked with the emblem of the southern border patrols. "They say they have found him…, High Lord, and there are photographs…."  
Duo snatched the folder out of the shaking hand, and thumbed through it quickly. He let it fall open to the three photographs, blurry long range surveillance images, each one clearly showing a figure which matched not only the sketchy descriptions of the enemy of the Empire that were available, but Duo's own memory of his once comrade in arms.   
"It's him."

* * *

"What do you mean, they found him? Found who?" Trowa glared at the young woman who had carried in the sealed package of documents as he untied the twine of the closure and dumped them out on the desk. Staring up at him from the papers and documents that spilled from the envelope, the photographs answered his question with an accusing, blurry blue eye.   
"Oh, God, no." Trowa felt his head swim. "When did this happen? Has he been captured yet?" Trowa glared up at the girl.  
"No sir," the girl started shuffling through the papers, looking for something, "but our reports say that the High Lord himself is on his way to the location to secure the…the target." She handed him a sheet detailing the orders that had left the High Lord's pen moments after the report had found his hand, and Trowa scanned it, swearing at every other line of the report.   
"Why didn't we know about this patrol? Why didn't we know they were looking that far south?"  
"They were acting against orders, sir. They followed the signs deeper into the Waste than they were ordered to patrol. It was shear luck."   
Trowa slammed his fist into the table. "His luck, our misfortune," Trowa dug through the rest of the reports, and suddenly came up with another single sheet. "What, the Wing Zero isn't there?"   
"No sir, not a sign of it." The girl handed him a large printout which had been folded double in the envelope. "No large magnetic signatures for ten miles in any direction of the caves. Nothing in the caves that's detectable, either, and none of the entrances are large enough to allow passage of the Wing Zero."   
"Damn it. Where has he moved it to? Where is it hidden?" Trowa dug through the stacks, scanning page after page. "Damn it, damn it, damn it. Why don't we have more information than this?"   
"There are storms over the Atlantic this time of year, sir, getting this much across was difficult, getting more will be almost impossible."   
Trowa sighed, and crumpled the report he held in his hand. "I know, I'm sorry." He grumbled and uncrumpled the report. "We've been looking for him… hell, since the Fall. And pure chance, he's right under the High Lord's nose all this time." The girl looked at him with concern. "There is nothing we can really do, it seems. The High Lord already has Heero in his grasp, and we should be thankful that the Wing Zero was not with him."  
"What will happen to him?"  
"Can't you guess? What happens to the enemies of the High Lord? He will be the crown jewel of the Blood Moon this year, the great Enemy of the state, the Snowball of the Animal Farm, found at last to pay for his sin of failure to save mankind."  
"I'm not sure I follow, sir, what do you mean 'Snowball'?"  
"Old book, sorry." Trowa stared out into the rain, feeling the last few rays of hope being washed away with its steady downpour. "Once Heero has given up his secrets, namely the location of the Wing Zero, Duo will add him to the sacrifices of the Blood Moon. And without Heero, I don't know if we have a hope of ever stopping the High Lord's rule, and heaven help us if Duo gets his hands on the Wing Zero."  
The young girl looked at him, and suddenly looked away, not wanting to see the tears of hopelessness on her commander's face.


	4. Fantasy and Nightmare

The blasted lands of North Africa had never been a hospitable place for life to begin with, but now they were as dead as the surface of the moon. Frozen in the perpetual half twilight of the seething Eye Storm, the storm that had raged over the impact zone for twenty years without pause, the sands of what had once been the Sahara were now glass shard strewn fields of gray sand and dust, stirred constantly by the undying winds, punctuated only by the occasional outcropping of sandstone or basalt.   
It was beside one of these basalt outcroppings that the VLT of the High Lord hovered to a halt, floating slowly down to rest beside the nearly identical VLT of the special ops unit which had secured the area and the prisoner. Once settled, the engines barely slowed, the High Lord himself flung open the cabin door, not waiting for his entourage to follow, and jumped down from the doorway to the hard packed sand below. Dressed in the full regalia of his station, the High Lord was a truly sinister figure, his entire body hidden from head to foot by a black velvet cloak trimmed in silver, only his leather gloved hands showing from beneath the folds. The commanders of the special opts team knelt before him, heads bowed almost to the sands, only rising once he had walked past them, starting to climb the ridge.   
"You have sedated and cuffed him, as per your orders, Captain?" Duo called back to the tall, dark faced man who led the squadron.   
"Yes, High Lord, he is completely secured as you ordered." The captain stopped behind Duo as they came to the small cave entrance. "It seems a tad excessive, your Lordship, he does not seem to be much of a threat, and put up no resistance."  
"Do not be so quick to judge this one, Captain. I know him, I know him well. No, the cuffs and sedation were not excessive, not at all."  
Gingerly, Duo stepped into the cavern mouth, and was at once nearly overwhelmed by the smell of stale sweat, human waste, and the foul odor that accompanies madness in any form. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, his gaze fell on the pair of soldiers guarding what appeared to be a slowly moving pile of rags. The pile, Duo realized, was not a pile, but the limp, slowly breathing body of Heero Yui. Duo sneered in disgust, and nudged the cuffed, scrawny figure with his boot toe.   
"So this is all you are reduced to, Heero." Duo sighed, kneeling down beside the almost skeletal body dressed in scraps of cloth that might have at one point been clothing or rags. The smell was almost unbearable to Duo, who wanted to turn his head and wretch, but knew better than to show such human weaknesses in front of his men. "And to think, I once looked up to you, and respected you."   
With a single motion, Duo stood and turned away, facing the captain. "Load him onto my VLT. I will see him personally to someplace where he may be better dealt with." The captain nodded sharply, and barked orders at the two men standing beside the crumpled form on the cave floor.   
I have waited such a long time for this, Heero, Duo thought to himself as he walked down the hill, careful yet seeming not to notice his steps. Twenty years for my chance to punish you for your failure, for letting harm come to my people, and fifteen waiting to get my hands on the Wing Zero, now knowing the secrets it possesses. He stopped, and watched the limp, dirt covered body being loaded into the secured compartment in the cargo bay of the VLT.   
Oh yes, Heero Yui, I've waited for this for a long time, Duo laughed to himself as he climbed into the compartment of the VLT, and I've had the place picked out for years in advance, all ready and waiting for you.  
"Destination, Sir?" The pilot turned and looked at the brooding, grinning figure of the High Lord.   
"Ah, yes. Vatican City, Commander."

* * *

"So at last, the machine of fate has been set back into motion." Ichibousenri said as Shakaku finished recounting the information he had learned from his master.   
"It seems that Shinigami will be victorious, and soon, unless we find Shiraha first." Shakaku replied, looking across the circle at the blue robed figure. "What we do know is hopeful, however. That Shiraha is not with his master, and has been hidden someplace beyond the logical reach of Shinigami and the High Lord, is great news, but it will do us no good unless we act upon it and somehow find Shiraha first."  
"What can we do, Shakaku?" The silver robed Yokaze protested. "By the Law, we cannot directly interfere; we cannot prompt humans to action."  
"Those rules were broken the minute Shinigami stepped beyond this circle, Yokaze." Shakaku fixed his brother with a flat stare.   
"Would you have us be no better than Shinigami, Shakaku?"  
"That is not what I am saying, brother Kousotsu." Shakaku held up his hand, blocking further protest. "What I am saying is that now that we know where Shiraha's master is, we can use him to find Shiraha before Shinigami does."  
"And if we do find Shiraha? Who will be its master now? Your master, Shakaku? Or yours, Ichibousenri?"  
"What are you implying, Yokaze?" Shakaku felt the urge to strike the leering face of his brother, but dared not break the truce of the meeting. "This is no game of power between us now, and you know that. All that matters now is stopping Shinigami before…"  
"Before what?" Yokaze growled. "How could humanity get any worse off? They will die out soon, and we will be free of this curse, able to return to the Dreamless."  
"Hold your tongue, Brother; you do not know the evil you speak." Ichibousenri brandished the silver rings of her staff at Yokaze menacingly. "Have you truly grown so jaded that nothing matters to you but that? We will never be free of this curse of life as you call it, if the humans kill themselves off, either."  
"Forgive me," Yokaze voice was patronizing beneath the apology. "I have overstepped myself, dear sister."  
"Perhaps Sagan's master might be found to control Shiraha?" Kousotsu suggested half in jest.  
"You might be on to something, Kousotsu." Shakaku said thoughtfully, and turned to the frail figure beside him. "Sagan, where has your master gone, can you tell us?"  
Sagan suddenly came to life, a wailing roar shaking the thin ruin of a body. "Master? Master….GONE! Gone but not dead…. It came for you… it came… where have you gone but not dead, Master?" Sobs wracked the pitiful form, leaning heavily on its broken staff.   
"What came for your master, Sagan?" Shakaku watched its failing brother struggle to form words.  
"The…the light. Light like when they die, but not dead! Oh not dead! Go away, leave us…Master… gone but not dead…" Sagan suddenly seemed to withdraw within its self, shivering, then exploded with a roar. "Wings! White wings, Feathers, it came! Took him… took him…dead but not gone…oh…dead but not gone… dead but not dead….dead but not dead…" The single blue eye seemed to fade slowly, and Sagan curled in on its self, crumpling into a sobbing heap on the black stone circle at its feet.  
"White wings?" Ichibousenri said softly, looking at Shakaku. "Could he mean…"  
"Shiraha…"


	5. Darkness and Ice

The court yard of St. Peter's showed the long years of abandonment and the ruin of the earthquakes and floods of the Fall far more so than most of the rest of the Vatican City. The walls still stood, though they were home to a virtual jungle of plants growing in their mortar, and many of the surrounding structures had survived undamaged, especially the great Library, which had been what had first drawn Duo here years ago. Rome its self, the once eternal city, was an empty ruin beyond these once sacred walls. A fine powder of ash fell continually from the sky, a reminder of the newly awakened volcano that had risen from the sea not far from the shore south of the city.   
A twin pair of sleek, black VLTs sat at idle in the broken stone courtyard before St. Peter's looking exceptionally out of place in this abandoned city overhung by the nearly charcoal black sky, surrounded by guards who looked suitably nervous for the position. Each glanced around through the soft snow of ash as though expecting some monster to leap at them from the darkness. Had they not been inside the walls of the Vatican, their concerns would have been merited. But nothing that prowled the ruins of the city dared step inside those walls, even after the long abandonment of the place.   
Duo stood watching the crew caring several metal storage lockers up the steps at the front of the basilica, his hood thrown back by the wind of the roater wash of the stabilizers, the edges of the black cloak dancing in the wind around the equally black leather of his boots. Joseph stood beside him, glancing around nervously; unsure of what was expected of him, finally at last finding security by latching his eyes onto the clipboard he perpetually carried. Two of the crates carried the remainders of the patrols supplies, the other a cargo far more fragile and dangerous, though sedated.  
"Joseph, do you know why I brought him here?" Duo said without looking away. Joseph started to say something, but the High Lord continued. "This was one of the first places that awoke to the new way of the world. The creatures that live here, those poor souls who were caught here when the first waves of monsters came from the wastes, they are things no one of my time could have thought possible, Joseph. This place oozes with power, with the magic that came back into the world, this place more than even my stronghold." Joseph knew this, and did not need the reminder of the fact the High Lord floated four inches above the stone as he stood. "In this place I am strong. And here," the High Lord laughed darkly, "he has no chance of fighting my will."  
In the distance, something howled. Joseph tried not to show the shudder of fear that ran down his spine at the sound. He knew about the Hounds the High Lord kept at the stronghold, the things that seemed like the hounds of hell, with far too many legs and not enough joints, and knew they had come from this city. He had also once seen the body of a man who had been given to the Hounds in their pen at the stronghold, and the vicious festering wounds that their bites and claws left. But on top of all of that, and the sound of their howls that echoed even in his nightmares, he also knew they were hardly the worst thing here.  
Joseph saw the High Lord's blue eyes narrow in dark thought, the slight lines of age showing at their corners. "Return with the others to the capital. I will have no need of you here, and you have preparations to attend to in my stead."  
"Is that wise, sir?" Joseph hesitated saying it, but it would have been a failure of his duty not to. "Shouldn't one of the squadrons stay with you for security purposes?"  
The High Lord turned a dark smile on Joseph, who felt slightly weak in the knees under the glare of those dark blue eyes. "No, we should not, Joseph, for there are things in this place that will protect me far better than they can. As I said, you should go soon," the High Lord's expression changed subtly, a change Joseph had quickly learned to detect, that betrayed the lapse in the stern façade of the High Lord. "Night is coming soon, Joseph. I would urge you to be gone well before then."  
"As you wish, High Lord."

* * *

The ice had advanced nearly five hundred miles south in the thirty years since the Fall, creeping down into what had once been the population centers of Canadian North America, the near ash black snow and cold of the bitterly long winters adding to the slow, dogged advance of the glaciers. Here, in this land that might have been the snowy, ice frozen circle of hell, where the sun blazed, but had no force against the black, hellish snow. Here, resting among the crags of black ice like some angel cast down from heaven was the blackened, battered metal hulk that was the remains of the Wing Zero. Its once beautiful metal feather wings were a ruin of shrapnel, folded closed against its back, one arm ending in a twist of metal, the other gripping the great double barreled beam cannon that was its most lethal weapon. The great giant slept, the black snow shrouding its shoulders, head, and body in an oily film of frost which made it seem insubstantial and somehow unreal. As the black snow falls, there is only the sound of the wind sobbing, and buried beneath that sad, forlorn sound, is a sound even more heart wrenching: someone is singing.  
The song is something old, from long before the Fall, from before man ever took his first tentative steps into space, and even before he knew the stars were not painted on the domes of heaven but a million billion suns just like his own. The song is much older than that, older by far. It is sad, lamenting, almost wailing, and in a language so old there are few left alive in the vastness of the universe who even remember that it was a language once, and its people were not a legend. The voice who sings it is tired, breathy with fatigue and cold, but does not let the song die in the wind. The song may be all that keeps the singer alive, but there is no way to know this.  
The light will burn away the darkness, the song proclaims, and salvation will come on wings of fire. The voice sings, and the voice inside the singer's head whispers the words to him. The voice is weak, but its words have been a balm to the singer's heart. There is still salvation for this hell world, still a chance that mankind might not die. And still a chance for him to save his soul, to find forgiveness for this crime against life he had a hand in. This time, there will be no failure, there can be no failure. Failure is the damnation and ruin of mankind.   
He must find his strength again, and rise up from this icy tomb. The devil that was once his closest friend is waiting for him, searching for him. He must be stopped, his soul brought out of the lies of Shinigami's evil. Only you can do this, golden child, the voice in his mind whispers, as sweet and fluid as honey, clear as the ringing of a golden bell. It must be you who brings man back into the light, back into the Grace that was once his. Do this, and the damnation you are doomed to might still be lifted. There is yet forgiveness, even for a monster such as you. But do not forget again all that has been done by your hand. All the blood shed, all the death, all of this.   
Tears flow down the singer's face, freezing as they fall. The tears are as black and tainted as the snow outside, a symptom of the rot that has taken hold inside the fragile form that was once a man. The rot is knowledge, the pain of understanding. He knows all of it again, all of the horror, as though he were there again, watching the death of the planet from high above.   
He wants to forget again – so he sings.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work in progress that will NEVER be finished.


End file.
